The Grudge

My two siblings are both older than me. My sister is 6.5 years older, my brother is 4.5 years older.

When they were in junior high and high school, there was a lot more racial violence than when I was in junior high and high school. I am to some degree simply fortunate to be younger than them. 

So on the one hand, when you have widespread social strife, sometimes people are innocent victims through no fault of their own. On the other hand, my siblings are both assholes and may have used general social strife as a convenient cover story for their shitty behavior leading to ugly confrontations.

When I was eleven years old and in sixth grade, my best friend was a Black classmate. We were both two of the smartest kids in our grade at that school. 

Late in the school year, the teachers decided to throw a party for all the smart kids in the sixth grade at that school and invited us to a pool party in a more upper class neighborhood than where I lived. It was only when a teacher came to my home to pick me up for the party that I learned that "all the smart kids" didn't include my best friend because of the color of her skin.

There was no prior notice allowing me to think about it and maybe talk to my mom or something, decide "I don't like this." and come up with a polite excuse to decline. At the tender age of eleven and running into this for the first time in my life, I wasn't prepared to say something on short notice like "Oh, that's a NO from me. She's my best friend. If she's not going, I see no reason to go hang out with people I'm not friends with. I accepted the invitation primarily as an opportunity to spend time with her."

I tended to have few friends in school. My mother was a German immigrant and my social expectations were not in step with many of the people around me. I just didn't hit it off with too many people though having lived in the same house from age three, by the time I was a teenager, I couldn't go anywhere in town without running into people who knew who I was.

I didn't really enjoy the party. These kids weren't my friends and didn't make me feel welcomed or genuinely included. It absolutely didn't result in new social connections for me.

This was the era of trying to desegregate schools. The following year, I was bused ten miles to Marshall Junior High, a horrifying cesspit that lacked AC, and she wasn't bused there with me.

So desegregation ended my friendship with a Black girl because it sent us to different schools for seventh grade. 

I don't feel I got anything whatsoever out of being bamboozled into attending this racist Whites-only party other than a giant chip on my shoulder because forty-nine years later, that still sticks in my craw.